Will Mickey Rourke Fight at WrestleMania?

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Fox Searchlight / Courtesy Everett Collection Worried about endangering his Oscar chances, the Best Actor nominee has denied he’ll take part in the WWE’s annual event. But wrestling fans know better—Randy “The Ram” Robinson is going to suit up for an old-fashioned ass-kicking.

Hush-hush and strictly confidential, but the chatter percolating in the pro-wrestling community is that despite his publicist’s braying to the contrary, Mickey Rourke is seriously considering jumping into the ring at this year’s WrestleMania.

You don’t have to be plugged into the world of fanboy Internet kooks to smell what’s cooking. All you have to do is watch RAW, the World Wrestling Entertainment’s flagship Monday-night broadcast, to witness the buildup: weekly clips of Rourke as Randy “The Ram” Robinson and The Wrestler accompanied by fawning announcers, followed by Jericho running his mouth and taunting the movie star, which is the second-best thing he does, right after crippling people.

For those of you not following the saga of Mickey Rourke’s would-be wrestling career—the one he is apparently trying to launch in the wake of his star-turn as The Wrestler—allow me to recap:

“The boys from the WWE called me and asked me to do it,” Rourke told Access Hollywood from the red carpet at the SAG awards last month. “Chris Jericho, you better get in shape,” he added, calling out the WWE’s ace heel, “because I’m coming after your ass.” A few days later, Rourke went on Larry King Live and tussled with Jericho via satellite. “If he got his wish and had a confrontation with me at WrestleMania, the end of the Jericho-Rourke movie would not turn out well for Mr. Rourke,” said Jericho. “There’s a difference between playing a wrestler in a movie and actually being one in real life.” The day after that, a spokesman for Rourke threw water on the whole shebang, insisting that The Mick had no intention of participating, and was instead going to be “focusing entirely on his acting career.”

Rourke should know this is no joke. If he decides to fight, he is going to feel some very real pain.

Why the sudden change? Perceived wisdom has it that the liberal elite at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are eager to promote acting and filmmaking as some sort of noble profession, and do not want to be cast as an unwitting PR machine for the WWE and its sideshow of monsters and muscle-bound freaks. Doing his best not to piss in the Academy’s punchbowl before the awards ceremony, Rourke has done a quick 180 toward industry respectability.

And yet to anyone at all familiar with the vagaries of the wrestling world, it seems very likely that the WWE is laying the foundation for an actor vs. wrestler angle at WrestleMania XXV, which will be beamed via satellite from Houston to all civilized nations on April 5.

Last night, Roddy Piper—the loquacious superstar of the 1980s whose unprovoked attack on Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka with a coconut has long been regarded by pundits as the greatest moment in television history (right after the first moon landing)—made an appearance shilling for Rourke. “That movie is about pain and suffering,” he told Jericho. “And yes, I cried.” Jericho’s response was to drop Piper with a giant haymaker to the skull, scoring some cheap heat from the marks in the audience who live for this soap opera.

If Rourke does end up donning the tights at the big event, he’ll follow in the footsteps of other celebrities of various stature who have gone over to the dark side for a taste of that sweet pay-per-view payoff. For 15 minutes of work, not counting the press conference, Rourke stands to make $1 million. He is also guaranteed to see more stars in the first half-second of his match—right after Jericho plows him in the head—than he did in the 22 years between Barfly and The Wrestler.